There are many satellite media providers throughout the world. For example, satellite media providers in the United States include DirecTV, and DISH Network, and there are many more satellite media providers throughout the world, such as British Sky Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. There are also many satellite internet providers. In the United States satellite internet providers include HughesNet, Wildblue, Dish, and Spacenet.
To allow users on the ground to receive broadcast media from satellites and to receive and transmit to the satellites providing satellite internet, relatively large antenna dishes are needed. Often the antennas are installed on the sides or on the roofs of houses and businesses, and the result can be unsightly.
By their nature, the antenna dishes are large and bulky and are clumsy to install, transport and store. The installation process for an antenna dish is labor intensive and requires fastening the antenna dish to the support structure of the dwelling by drilling through walls or roofs into beams, studs or joists. Antenna dishes also require substantial warehouse floor space for storage.
The satellite media and internet providers often pay for the installation. Because the installer's labor time is a large percentage of the satellite media and/or satellite internet provider's operation cost, the providers are interested in minimizing this cost.
Artificial impedance surface antennas (AISAs) have been used in some satellite media and internet applications. AISAs are described by: D. Gregoire and J. Colburn, “Artificial impedance surface antenna design and simulation”, Proc. 2010 Antenna Applications Symposium, pp. 288; by J. S. Colburn et al., “Scalar and Tensor Artificial Impedance Surface Conformal Antennas”, 2007 Antenna Applications Symposium, pp. 526-540; and by B. H. Fong et al, “Scalar and Tensor Holographic Artificial Impedance Surfaces”, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagation, accepted for publication, 2010.
Artificial impedance surface antennas (AISAs) are less unsightly and are less clumsy to handle and store as compared to large antenna dishes. AISAs take up less space when stored, because they are essentially flat. However, AISA are more complex to fabricate and install than antenna dishes.
What is needed is an efficient low cost method for designing, fabricating, and installing artificial impedance surface antennas (AISAs) for satellite media and internet applications as well as other communication applications. The embodiments of the present disclosure answer these and other needs.